There has been a sharp increase in squatter claims making the news. If you aren’t familiar with “squatter’s rights,” its an area legally called adverse possession, where someone can lay claim to a space after occupying it for so many years. The average person would think this is trespassing, but there is a legal distinction in that trespassers don’t claim to own the property, but squatters do. This allows someone to break into an abandoned home, act like they own it and thus become impossible to evict.
If you think this sounds crazy…that’s because it is. But we live in the world of crazy, such that someone can break into a 4.6 million dollar home near Lebron James and simply occupy it, even throwing parties and renting out spaces. Or one that allows a squatter to put a Temporary Restriction Order on the owner of a home and kick him out in Washington.
We do, seriously, live in a clown world.
Not surprisingly, because the police either can’t or won’t stop this insanity, it is spreading wildly, especially in deep blue states like New York. In every part of the world where I’ve seen private property rights degrade, the sequence goes like this:
Criminals go from individuals to gangs that are well organized
Private citizens begin offering services to counter the crime
Criminals begin to get violent
Private citizens begin to “disappear” individuals
We’re already seeing organized squatters, including a lot of illegal immigrants, targeting wealthy homes in groups. We’re also seeing other citizens develop businesses around evicting squatters, including a self-proclaimed “squatter hunter” who charges $5,000 or more to kick out squatting parties. Sadly, we’re seeing a death toll too, as two squatters beat a woman to death for simply trying to reclaim her home.
The next step is squatters will start disappearing. Contrary to popular belief, police exist to protect the guilty, especially people accused or guilty of serious crimes.
Think about it, if you thought your neighbor sexually molested your child, what would stop you from beating them to death? I mean, if your kid was abused and scarred for life, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t at least contemplate burying the culprit 6 feet underground. The police and your belief that justice is best served in a courtroom are what stops you from pursuing this.
As we remove cops and courts, mark my words, we’re going to see squatting stop, because people are just going to disappear. Squatters are going to get beaten to death by angry mobs of property owners and their bodies dumped in the street. Nobody will say anything, just like people in Italy were silent on mobster killings. Vigilante justice will fill the void, and with it will come the settling of petty disputes and rivalries at the end of a stick and a gun.
Some people are cheering this on. They are thinking “Yes, finally, I can settle my score with so and so.” To that I shake my head. We all think we’ll be the ones on top when the world shatters, but in reality, in a world of might makes right, the most despicable people rise to the top. Look to the French Revolution if you need an example.
Some states are getting ahead of this, namely Florida, which passed legislation to allow police to kick off squatters. Even New York is beginning to modify its laws, likely too late to prevent the mass exodus of businesses.
More so than politics, we need to get a handle on squatting before it turns decent people into crazed vigilantes.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
The implosion of public school during COVID created a whole new batch of homeschooling families. While this is great news, it also means more than a few families are discovering the difficulty in homeschooling children, especially when the child has difficulty in subjects the parents aren’t familiar with.
That’s why I encourage all homeschooling parents to use AI. I use CoPilot since its free, but you’re welcome to use OpenAI or any other AI. Now, we aren’t going to try and look up gender studies or DEI subjects, because parents should talk with their children about those topics. But what about math?
Let’s be honest, unless you happen to work in engineering, integrating a function is likely something you haven’t done recently. AI makes this really easy AND it explains the work.
Remember diagramming sentences? I don’t because I’m sure I slept through that portion of school. So what do you do when your kid is confused about diagramming sentences?
Problem solved! But what about foreign languages?
Too bad for CoPilot! You have to have a Microsoft account of some kind to make this work
If it can diagram sentences, it can definitely update your work too!
What about chemistry? Balancing redux equations in high school chemistry is something I haven’t touched in years.
Another great use of AI is technical help. If something doesn’t work correctly on your computer, AI makes it easy to troubleshoot. I had a lot of problems getting rid of the kid’s google accounts from my wife’s laptop. I would go to a website and their account, vice my wife’s, would load and be heavily restricted. AI helped me solve that problem.
Another great school use is Excel functions. Microsoft Excel is extremely powerful, much more so than Google Sheets, but the syntax and formatting can get messy quickly. CoPilot is especially good at taking what you want to do and spitting out a function you can copy/paste. Even something complicated like pivot tables falls to the power of AI!
I think Microsoft captured AI, especially large language learning models, with the phrase “CoPilot.” Yes, AI can generate some pretty humorous poems and the occasional rap song, plus create some very cool images, but human beings are still far better at imagining unique things. Where AI shines is rote work. How many times have you Googled different Excel formulas, or how to integrate a function, or where some setting is in PowerPoint? My kids have tons of weird questions that pop up, ranging from English and Math to Biology and Chemistry. Anything that is straightforward will easily be answered with AI.
One caution: I always encourage people to have a discussion with the AI. Just popping in a question and getting an answer is dangerous, because the AI, like human beings, can get it wrong. This happened on an English question my daughter had. The first answer didn’t make sense, and she was ready to write off AI. I had her put in a few more prompts, and then the AI (in this case, CoPilot) gave her the correct answer. Treat it like a really smart human and you’ll do great!
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. And besides the pictures, nothing else in this post was generated by AI.
One of the biggest concerns for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is the loss of TSMC, a huge company that makes around 80% of the world’s advanced microprocessors and chipsets and 55% of chips overall. Think about that for just one second…55% of all chips in the entire world are made by one company. In your home alone, there are chips in your computer, cars, certain HVAC components, smartphones, your wifi router, TVs, and even things like refrigerators. 55% of these chips come from one company.
That’s pretty crazy when you think about it. TSMC has facilities around the world, although the majority are located in Taiwan. Why wouldn’t it open more facilities in the US? Well, because its expensive due to all the red tape involved in making facilities in the US and because there is not enough talent in the US to make chips. If we drop the nice language, TSMC has basically said it costs too much and Americans aren’t smart enough to make these advanced chips.
Ouch. So much for all that STEM money we keep throwing at education that gets misused. Since chips are key components of most weapon systems, Congress passed the CHIPS act to subsidize and incentivize chip manufacturers in America. But guess what came along with the money? A whole lot of strings, including DEI strings:
The law contains 19 sections aimed at helping minority groups, including one creating a Chief Diversity Officer at the National Science Foundation, and several prioritizing scientific cooperation with what it calls “minority-serving institutions.” A section called “Opportunity and Inclusion” instructs the Department of Commerce to work with minority-owned businesses and make sure chipmakers “increase the participation of economically disadvantaged individuals in the semiconductor workforce.”
– The Hill
This is exactly why China and other nations can beat us at these high-end games. Americans are known for working hard and figuring things out, and until recently the advanced nature of American colleges and other education institutions was known around the world. But we’ve allowed morons (and if you support DEI, you are a moron) to write our laws and corrupt our institutions. The steady rise in costs from these morons has driven everyone away, from chip manufacturers and oil and gas production to basic tools and batteries.
We did this to ourselves. We can undo it too. Imagine a world without stupid bureaucrats running everything into the dirt. Imagine the US unleashing its potential and the hard work and smarts actually paying off, not being stifled by people insisting on laws and incentives that make no sense in the real world. A far better world, and one within our reach, if we choose to make it so.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
Re-entering the workplace after being a stay-at-home mother has to suck. It used to be considered a noble and honorable thing to take care of small children. Heck, it used to be considered a profession that would normally pay on the order of $100K-$120K a year. When you think about it, a stay-at-home mother is balancing checkbooks, cooking meals, taking care of sick children, constantly doing laundry and sanitizing her home (young children are terrible spreaders of disease), and increasingly home-schooling children while driving them to various activities.
Yet most employers look at the “break in resume” as a negative, and don’t view stay-at-home mothers as doing any work. Then again, most of these people probably forget to thank their mothers on Mothers Day, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. My wife recently re-entered the workplace, and although she is working from home (and we still have a 2 year old), it was a challenge to find an employer that didn’t look down on her decision to care more about her children and husband then a career.
In honor of her decision, and given the increasing desire to hire older workers over younger workers, I asked Microsoft CoPilot to build some resume bullets for a stay-at-home mom re-entering the workplace, and I got these:
Multitasking & Time Management: Successfully managed a busy family schedule, including educational activities, sports commitments, and doctor appointments, while maintaining a clean and organized home.
Budgeting & Financial Planning: Effectively managed household budget, making strategic decisions to ensure financial stability and meet long-term family goals.
Conflict Resolution & Problem Solving: Developed strong problem-solving skills through mediating sibling disputes and addressing unexpected household issues.
Communication & Interpersonal Skills: Fostered an open and supportive family environment that encouraged open communication, emotional support, and mutual respect.
Project Management: Led and executed various projects, such as planning family events and home improvement tasks, demonstrating strong organizational and leadership skills.
Not bad CoPilot, but I think I can do better:
Professional chauffeur. Successfully balanced the extracurricular needs of five individuals whose activities are always located during rush hour traffic and at opposite ends of the city. Managed to avoid accidents, get children to places on time and yet still get dinner on the table.
Skilled negotiator. Can successfully argue with children from 2 to 18 years old, providing persuasive arguments in the wide spectrum of age ranges. Able to bribe without being discovered by peers.
Outstanding Communicator. Able to switch seamlessly between soothing words needed to calm a 4 year old to the angry words needed to vivisect a school administrator that decided pornographic books are a great idea in school libraries. Utilizes full volume range, from sweet whispers to banshee-level screaming to prevent small children from playing in traffic.
Multitasking Momma. Can you take a shower, get dressed and put on makeup, balance a checkbook, take out the garbage cans, make four lunches and boot a cantankerous teenager out the door to school, all before 7 AM and without the luxury of coffee?
Long Range Planner. Provided life guidance to children otherwise lost in the world. Able to keep a husband motivated despite a soul sucking job that cares little of him. Builds her own world that might look messy on the outside, but has more love and charisma then any corporate party.
Given that the next generation seems to whine about showing up on time, putting on real clothes (no, pajamas at your job interview don’t count), and can’t think out more than 2 days…I’ll take a stay-at-home mom as an employee over a whiny 20-something any day.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
Man, did the MS Society screw up big this time. After firing a 90-year-old volunteer who asked “what pronouns meant,” then doubling down on the firing, then realizing people were willing to move their donation money elsewhere, they issued a non-apology that said they had “the best of intentions.”
Plenty of people are calling for more than an apology, and I agree with them. It’s not enough to apologize. The fact that nobody was fired is always telling. Real apologies don’t contain excuses, they simply apologize and do right by the victim.
The leftist craziness that has taken over corporations and other organizations only stops when someone pushes back. Hard. Remember Target?
That drop in stock price was well understood. While Target is still a fairly woke store, it certainly has become far more restrained.
Budweiser too. And Harvard, Yale and Penn. And now the MS Society, because there are plenty of places to donate towards MS research. I guess MS Society might have to lay off some of the 118 employees that make over 100K a year, according to comments at Legal Insurrection.
Face it, the crazy left-wing folks want you to keep donating and buying their products while they wish you would die. I wish it wasn’t true, but it is. Stop donating to them. Don’t feel bad about donating to other causes. You can find better beer than Budweiser, better stores than Target, better colleges than Harvard, and better charities than MS Society. Walk away without looking back. Don’t fund the craziness.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
Not a week goes by without someone remarking that I must be lucky to have military medical insurance. A few years ago I would agree that military health care, despite the ups and downs, was actually not too bad. I’ve had surgery, preventative and acute care, and almost all the time it was decent.
The Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) makes her way through the Panama Canal to cross into the Pacific Ocean on June 3, 2009. The Comfort is participating in Continuing Promise 2009, a four-month humanitarian and civic assistance mission providing medical and other services in seven countries throughout Latin America. DoD photo by the U.S. Navy. (Released)
That’s not true anymore. It’s now taking months to schedule an appointment. I called in January and was given first availability in April. The visits I have had recently are rushed, and I notice more doctors being borrowed between facilities to make appointments happen. Increasingly, I have to seek care at facilities more than an hour’s drive from my home.
What happened? Well, to put it bluntly, the military decided that health care is an expense, not an investment. Last year the services combined all military health records and scheduling into one system called MHS Genesis. This in itself is a good thing, since it means if I seek care at an Air Force hospital, they can get my records electronically without me having to bring physical records along from a Navy hospital
But someone used the merger to lay off thousands of employees. From the perspective of a twidget sitting behind a desk, heath care is an expense. You do everything in your power to minimize expenses, including firing people, shuttering facilities and offering less services in the pursuit of “finding efficiencies.” I’m sure it padded someone’s pockets, but it’s now resulting in less and less health care.
I’ll use myself as an example. I need a routine surgery. Normally it takes 2-4 weeks to schedule. Right now I’m looking at summer time at the earliest, because the USNS COMFORT is deploying, and when she deploys, they empty the nearby Naval hospitals of doctors to go underway. Great for Central America, terrible for our own military members.
Gee, the US government caring more about foreign citizens than their own people? Where have I seen that before?
If you need mental health appointments, better schedule a month out. While there are lots of suicide resources available on the spot, they are almost all over the phone and haven’t made a dent in suicide rates:
“Active Component suicide rates have gradually increased since 2011. While the 2022 Active Component rate is slightly higher (3%) than 2021, both years remain lower than 2020.” -Department of Defense Releases Annual Report on Suicide in the Military: Calendar Year 2022
Surprising no one, the military’s solution to lack of care is…bring more dependents into military health care?
Hicks laid out a plan to grow the number of patients who receive care in a military treatment facility by 7% by the end of 2026, compared to the number of beneficiaries in December 2022. That would mean 3.3 million people would be using the MTFs in three years, according to Military Times calculations.
So let me get this straight. You can’t see patients in a timely fashion now. You “right sized” health care so that it barely gets by. You prioritized treating foreign citizens over your own. You did one thing right, which was move dependents out into civilian care so they can get treated and not suffer. And instead of hiring more people, or changing how you man the USNS COMFORT, or any number of ways to address the inability to provide health care, you want to bring on MORE patients into an already stressed system?
This makes no sense except in one case: financial. In the FY2024 request for funding, there is this section:
Controlling Health Care Costs DOD’s budget request noted that private sector care accounted for 65% of the total care delivered to beneficiaries and that it “will continue to represent an important part of the overall health system in [FY2024] and beyond.” DOD did not state a long-term strategy to control these health care costs while sustaining military medical readiness requirements and other health-related program investments.
So well over half of military health care is delivered by the private sector. Literally, the military couldn’t make it work if it tried. But that’s expensive, and in typical fashion, the military thinks it can do it cheaper, despite not having a great track record in doing so.
Treating health care as an expense, rather than a mission enabler, means we’ll never get the surge capacity needed to deal with wartime injuries and never get appointment scheduling to a reasonable level. This limits the use of Tricare as a recruiting and retention tool, and will exacerbate an already difficult recruiting problem. It’ll force more people, including myself, to pay out of pocket for care we were promised when we first signed up. And for some reason, the military wants to shoot itself in the foot over this.
I don’t recommend it…I heard gunshot wounds take 4-6 weeks to schedule an initial appointment.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
People are finally beginning to pay attention to declining birth rates, since it will send Social Security into a death spiral, and there are plenty of efforts in Congress to provide tax cuts to promote people having more children. These efforts are doomed to fail, because more tax dollars motivates exactly zero people to have more children.
I have five kids at home, and in honor of them today, I’ll give you the top five reasons people don’t have more kids.
Number 5: Our public schools suck
I live in a fairly nice community, and my oldest daughter goes to a high school “academy” which has a specialized track for medicine. You have to apply to get in, so you would think it would be a fairly rigorous education. Sadly, you’d be wrong. There are kids that have failed classes in multiple semesters still hanging out, and just like how not prosecuting criminals brings more crime, not punishing poor performance brings more poor performance.
The older families at our church say “Well just homeschool,” but that is NOT cheap if you use a co-op, online curriculum, or anything other than doing it yourself…which takes a lot of time. Worse still, the child-hating Democrats in my state shot down bills that let homeschoolers participate in sports or get tax credits for expenses, so you get punished socially and financially for choosing homeschool. Worse still, the price of private education has skyrocketed, so if you’re a one-income family with mom or dad at home with lots of kids (like my family is), you better be loaded with money or else it’s a non-starter.
The fact is most large families have to rely on public school, and because they suck so bad, parents spend more time than they did in the past to supervise them, which takes away time from their own activities. You either tolerate loser teachers that don’t understand history, homeschool your kids or pay out the nose for education. Not exactly desirable. And speaking of the time suck…
Number 4: Most after school activities are run by inconsiderate people with no children
My son was in rec league baseball for a while. Good fun, but he would be out at games until 9 pm some nights…on school days, when he’s in middle school. When I was growing up, 9 pm was considered late as a middle schooler. You might be awake at home, but certainly not doing regular activities.
Not anymore. I regularly have kids in activities until 9 or even 11 pm at night! Ballet dance competitions and late night sports are by far the biggest offenders, but it’s everywhere now. These involve driving at night, getting home late, and then (for you as the parent anyway) waking up early to drive the 30-60 minutes to get to work (or more if you live in a big city). Talk about wearing you down! Worse still, half of these places have no pauses for dinner, so if you have a big family with small kids, pray you can pack enough food and that your little ones aren’t tired and cranky.
I particularly hate people that plan meetings or activities over dinner or lunch…pet peeve of mine.
All of this means most of my friends with two kids can manage a grueling rec softball season, but I have to balance five kids desires against my desire to get some sort of sleep. All at the expense of any hobbies I might want. Which brings up the next point…
Number 3: Society constantly tells you to not have kids
Now, I won’t begrudge people their hobbies, just like I don’t begrudge people that make more money than me. Everyone makes choices, and having more kids is a choice. But I’d be a rich man if I had a nickel everytime someone offered me advice along the lines of “You know how birth control works right” ***insert snicker here***.
A more salty friend of mine once, in a group conversation, replied with “I do, and I know your wife does too!”, which was the most alpha-male verbal throat chop I’d seen in a while. But I digress.
It’s already hard enough to find alone time with your spouse as a Catholic who follows the Marquette Method. It sucks having doctors push birth control on you every. single. visit. It’s even more fun to have them tell you that NFP doesn’t work and that you’re stupid for doing it (their words, not mine). And it’s rare to have anyone respond to “I have five living kids” with “Wow, what a beautiful family,” when the more common response is one of disdain. Speaking of disdain…
Number 2: Companies making having kids hard
Car seats used to be thin. Now they are thrones. And you can’t fit three across without making a sacrifice to the car seat goddess. It’s so bad that it is a form of birth control. And before you chime in about “safety ratings,” I looked up the safety ratings of these thrones, and I found the changes between seats to be similar to how professors change chapters in a book to force students to buy new books. The ratings are getting a whole lot better compared to the real estate they consume.
Unless you can explain how adding 5 pounds of side force to an already high rating significantly affects the safety rating, I’m going to always say that car seat manufacturers hate large families. I’ve done the math, it doesn’t add up.
Try eating out now…even McDonalds (which I don’t visit) is expensive. Now multiply it by 7. Try finding a home with enough bedrooms and fighting off investors to buy it, and definitely don’t tell your friends that your kids have to share a bedroom, because you’ll get looked at like some sort of monster. Or try fighting the little old lady HOA President that drives around your neighborhood and issues you tickets for your kids bikes in the front lawn.
Screw that lady…so glad I don’t live in a HOA…
Companies in general appeal to DINKs (Dual Income, No Kids), and if they do appeal to kids, they like you to have two. Anymore and you better be loaded. Which brings me to the last point…
Number 1: Society values work, not your family
If you say “I’m a homemaker” as a woman, you get looked down upon. Even if you manage five kids, which involves feeding them, balancing a checkbook, driving them everywhere, answering school emails and helping out on homework…somehow that isn’t “real work.” But you could sit in an office, drink coffee, chit chat with your office mates, and put in a whole 3 hours of work a day, and that’s “real work.”
Don’t worry though, like the Bobs, work will value you up to the point you are told your services are no longer required!
Face it, we stopped valuing stay-at-home parents a while back. We think they are lesser for picking their family over full-time paid employment.
And that’s the rub right there. When you create a toxic environment for people that have or want large families, you will get smaller families. The societal pressure permeates everything, far more than any financial incentive. Even if you got paid $20,000 a year per child, you’d be called a welfare rat for taking the money. It goes farther than even children, because when the point of getting married isn’t to raise kids, it makes it easy to simply “shack up,” which is why the current marriage rate is less than half that in 1976.
Until our society treats raising kids as a noble goal and worthy of the respect it deserves, we will continue to have declining birth rates among the majority of people that feel societal pressure.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
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